1984

George Orwell

Book Three: Chapters IV–VI

Important Quotations Explained

The Appendix of 1984 stands as Orwell’s
explanation of New-speak, the official language of Oceania. Although
Orwell felt that these ideas were too technical to completely integrate
into the novel, they support the novel’s stance on language and
thought in relation to the public’s acceptance of governmental control.

Newspeak is the official language of Oceania, scheduled
for official adoption around 2050, and designed
to make the ideological premises of Ingsoc (Newspeak for English
Socialism, the Party’s official political alignment) the only expressible
doctrine. Newspeak is engineered to remove even the possibility of
rebellious thoughts—the words by which such thoughts might be articulated have
been eliminated from the language. Newspeak contains no negative
terms. For example, the only way to express the meaning of “bad”
is through the word “ungood.” Something extremely bad is called
“doubleplus ungood.”

Newspeak’s grammar is arranged so that any word can serve
as any part of speech, and there are three different groups of vocabulary
words. The A vocabulary contains everyday words and phrases, as
Orwell says, “for such things as eating, drinking, working” and
so on. In comparison with modern English, these words are fewer
in number but more rigid in meaning. Newspeak leaves no room for
nuance, or for degrees of meaning. The B vocabulary of Newspeak
contains all words with political or ideological significance, specially
tailored to engender blind acceptance of the Party’s doctrines.
For example, “goodthink” means roughly the same thing as “orthodoxy.”
The B vocabulary consists entirely of compound words and often compresses
words into smaller forms to achieve conceptual simplicity: the English
phrase “Thought Police,” for instance, is compressed into “thinkpol”;
“the Ministry of Love” becomes “miniluv.” The C vocabulary encompasses
words that relate specifically to science and to technical fields
and disciplines. It is designed to ensure that technical knowledge
remains segmented among many fields, so that no one individual can
gain access to too much knowledge. In fact, there is no word for
“science”; as Orwell writes, “Ingsoc” covers any
meaning that such a concept could possibly have.

The particularities of Newspeak make it impossible to
translate most older English (oldspeak) texts into the language;
the introduction of the Declaration of Independence, for instance,
can be translated only into a single word: crimethink. Furthermore,
a great many technical manuals must be translated into Newspeak;
it is this bulk of translation work that explains the Party’s decision
to postpone the full adoption of Newspeak to 2050.